The Color of Monet...

would be a great title for a book about the relationship of art and value or, well, maybe it wouldn't.

See, I was hoping to have something humorous to put down in here, but when you try to force out some funny, it rarely works. 

Instead I'll just talk about how I've decided I'll always opt for the pat down if my only other option at airport security is the x-ray machine. I've only once had to go through that thing, but I was decided that yesterday would not be my second time. Having had enough radiation in one lifetime from imaging for all manner of injury, and with these machines not all that tested, I'd rather have a gloved hand once-over. They offered to do it in a private room if I was uncomfortable having it done in front of people, but somehow I feel a private airport pat-down would prove more to be far more uncomfortable.

Workers in McCarran Airport were also highly supportive of my consistently dopy style of mixing coloring on pairs of shoes. I wonder if this would be as well received if I did not appear to be a bit younger than I really am.

In the opposite vein of reception, on a brief jaunt last week some dude from a car yelled that I "looked foolish." With no noted response — I neither turned head, broke stride, or anything else — he repeated himself. I continue not to understand the threat of a relatively skinny guy running down the street, even if he's got no shirt on. And hell, foolish? Do any of the assclowns that yell these things really think it's both my first run and first run in such attire? Dream on, right Steve? The real question: why are all these people so insecure?

I wonder if old Gore Vidal was insecure...

Welcome to the Neighborhood

Seeing as how I have lived in the same neighborhood for nearing the start of my third year, one can forget about what might seem a touch ridiculous in other parts. Case in point: I left my apartment this evening carrying a handful of grapes — a bunch actually. This seemed perfectly normal as I wanted a snack for while I walked but then, as I sighted the man with a parrot on his shoulder around the corner, I realized that eating a bunch of grapes while you walk may, in fact, be vaguely outside the norm. Still, I would expect it lies closer to normal than having a parrot on your shoulder.

I've noted before that any sort of eating while one walks is considered rather strange behavior. Most people, it seems, sit down to eat. Me though, unless I have plans to dine with someone, I tend to feel that eating is more of an act to fill a void in energy before going to the next activity. I enjoy eating, I really do but, considering I'm often running late, if I can combine any activities, I'm doing myself a big favor.

Moving on in the extremely linear fashion that I tend to adopt in here, I want to take the time to post this video of Beth Stelling from last night's Conan O'Brien show. Beth is a person I got to know a little in my forays into comedy in Chicago and she's a real delight. Aside from actually being funny, she's also really nice and pleasant to spend time — even the limited time I've spent — with. Since I'm generally griping about nonsense on here, I want to be sure I'm balancing it with representing when good people do things well. So congrats to Beth Stelling, I'll always root more for the nice folks.

Speaking of nice folks, on the way to work this morning, a little girl in the backseat of a Volvo station wagon stared at me as I waited to cross the street so I gave her a big smile and a thumbs up. I realized this was not the most standard of responses, but it was enough for the kid. Thanks kid, for being one of those simple restorative dailies. I pulled the same on a little girl in a stroller walking home. For whatever reason, when kids smile at me, I get more excited than when adults to. I think their innocence translates to a genuine sense that I might not be an asshole. But also their innocence might make their judgment foolhardy!

Shit, other than that, I'm getting excited for the Olympics to kick off. I admit, I'd be happier if no one were on drugs, but there are so many weird chemicals in everything we eat and touch that many of us are turning out unwitting mutants...I just wish that for me it meant I was impervious to injury instead of being impervious to being impervious to injury!

Play on playas.

Mean

Mathematically speaking, it's the average. Middle-school speaking, it's just how a lot of kids act. Pop musically, it's a Taylor Swift song. And right as I was planning this, that song was being played by the company with whom our own shares an office. Now I dig that song, but that won't prevent me taking digs at it here. Away we go.

Swift is assailing a bullying type in the song, for his physical and verbal abuse. But the problem I have is that she tells him how one day she (or the song's protagonist) will be living in a big old city, and all that individual will be is mean. Living in a city that I enjoy, I still resent the notion that living in the city makes you any better. It's precisely the kind of city superiority that makes people loathe cities from time-to-tim. How exactly does living in a big old city equate to a superior stance to being mean? The protagonist can still be a bitch/asshole, but because they will be living in a big ole city it's okay? People are people. Some are great, some are shit, some are in between. Some of them live in cities, and some of them live elsewhere.

I was also thinking that this song reeks of spite. But I realize that some day has not arrived yet for the protagonist, so perhaps this song is a little ditty or extended mantra that the protagonist tells themself internally to deal with the constant bullying they receive. Plus, there is the acknowledgement of the cycle of abuse, and it closes with "why you gotta be so mean," so there's that nice return, after all the hatred aimed at the "mean" person, to an attempt to be sympathetic.

As this shows, you can [over]analyze anything you like, but here's a lengthy analysis (and not of a Taylor Swift song) that I think is worth the read. It's about the role of the political comic or perhaps a better distillation is to say what the relationship of comedy to politics is versus what it could and maybe should be.

Also, a quick open letter to my legs and feet: please resume somewhat standard operation. I mean, I just want to run like maybe forty or fifty or more miles a week, and that's pretty normal right?

When I don't run, I'm liable to be more mean (jerk), when really I want to be mean (average) for what mean means for my body (running forty-plus miles at a variety of paces).

Oh, and have a nice weekend.

Circuitousness

Circular is really the more apt terminology to describe how my brain works. But in my circular thought, meandering, and thus circuitousness, can result. It means I often end up responding to my initial question with the question of whether I should have asked my question in the first place.

And while circular reasoning is incredibly aggravating much of the time, because it's how my brain operates naturally, it is where it derives great humor. I can't escape the circular in the literal either, as I spent so many days running around a track and, even when not, every path leads you back to your abode, until you move. So what we're dealing with is a series of circles, sometimes concentric, sometimes merely intersecting and, at the least getting a touch of tangential interaction.

Not long ago I was watching Real Genius, one of my favorite films of all time. The basic plot (of course you could click that link) is Val Kilmer and some other young tech whiz types create a laser that is meant, unbeknownst to them, to allow the government to kill single targets. Released in 1985, Star Wars (not the Lucas flick), was sort of heavy on the brain. And twenty-seven years later, we're damn close to what we were afraid of. Folks aren't being vaporized by a laser, but the drones we're using are damn close. Now this does somewhat violate the tenets of this blog by talking about relevant information, but sometimes it's just not to be avoided. Strangely enough, the author of that article refers to the moral imperative, which Val Kilmer uses in a rather different context in the film referenced. Morality is a tough one.

I'm glad to have to concern myself with whether I should withhold a tip from a shitty server at a restaurant and not whether I should authorize the, well, it has to be called murder pretty much, of dangerous individuals. It's not quite the pre-crime of Minority Report, but you can see where these concepts come from. Far out is a little too close sometimes.

One day, because everyone eats chemicals, the body will reject organic items...or organic will be impossible to exist.

Or when everyone has come over on an organic mandate, chemicals will replace organic as the high-end, sought after, trendy foods.

And the stupid haircuts of myself and others will be so popular that the subversives will have a coif akin to the button-ups of old. But it's hard to escape being buttoned down...

When you ask for a revolution, remember that you end up at the same starting point.